We didn’t get out the door in time this morning, so we missed our train to Bratislava, Slovakia. We were able to purchase new tickets and even upgraded to first class which had sooo much more leg room and wider seats. It was worth the extra cost.
By the time we arrived in Bratislava, instead of having a few hours to check out the city as we’d planned, we had three minutes to find and run to our next train. We felt like experts at train stations by now, so we were confident we could do it. Well, we hadn’t come across the Slovakian train system before and were unprepared for it’s ridiculousness. In the other countries we’ve been to, we just looked down the departures board until we found the information that matched our tickets: departure time, train operator (company), and train number. Once we matched the info, we would see the platform number we needed to go to catch our train. EASY!
Well, in Slovakia they only show the departure times and the trains’ final destinations. I’m not sure why they think foreigners will know their trains’ final destinations if they aren’t going there. PLUS some cities are called something different here than they are in the U.S. For instance, we needed to take a train to Breclav, Czechia, but the train’s final destination was Praha (known to us who are from the U.S. as Prague). Um, how exactly were we supposed to know any of that?! So obviously, we missed our NEXT train too.
After attempting to speak to several people at the train station, but being unable find anyone who spoke English (another first for us on this trip), we were able to purchase new tickets to Krakow. Yay! Things were looking up until the train we were to catch arrived 20 minutes late due to mechanics, then lost another 25 minutes due to construction on the tracks.
We finally made it to Breclav, Czechia, but our connecting train had left long before we got there. So, after a looong day of missing trains, I was unwilling to rebook our tickets for tonight with 2 additional stops before Krakow, and decided to stay in Breclav tonight and start out refreshed in the morning.
